


Missed, Missing

by eyegnats



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Banter, But They Have Sex So How Bad Is It, Frottage, Longing, M/M, Meandering Sword Ending, One Night Stand, Oral Sex, They Are Good Friends Even After All This Time, mildly possessive sylvain, sad end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24955630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyegnats/pseuds/eyegnats
Summary: Felix is invited inside after completing a mercenary job for one Margrave Gautier.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 85





	Missed, Missing

Felix knows he is nigh unrecognizable. Even if that was not his intention, age has hollowed his face and broadened his shoulders in pursuit of the gruff, travel-hewn mercenary he is now. He is no longer a hero of a war won decades ago. He is no longer a Fraldarius. He is just another sellsword, one of hundreds wandering the Fodlan outlands. He is nothing more than a hired body for tasks far worse than sex. A blade with a hand attached. It’s the life he’s carved for himself, and it is blissfully anonymous.

“Felix.”

The name calls out to him, breathless with excitement. Felix has been in the courtyard of the Gautier estate for twenty-five minutes when two hands clamp around his shoulders. Felix is unused to being recognized. He has limited practice in how to properly react. 

Sylvain does not notice his hesitance, or his body’s immediate tense of every muscle that can bring a sword to a throat. Sylvain smiles, broad, and collides their foreheads together.

“Fuck,” Felix says. A quick pain blossoms across his hairline and he rips himself back, out of Sylvain’s grip. He shoves a forearm out against Sylvain’s armorless chest and prods him backwards, away. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says again. “Look at you. You, after all this time. I heard you handled that bandit crop with such grace it looked staged to impress me.” Sylvain’s laugh is the deep, boisterous laugh of a noble. He’s grown a beard and belly to match. Felix notes the grey sprouting at his temples. The creases of gathering crow’s feet at his eyes. 

Felix looks away. “My name is not Felix,” he says. Huffs, really, as he finds himself tugged back into the sway of banter Sylvain had a knack for producing. 

“Not Felix? Oh, I want to hear this. What fake, grizzled mercenary name have you bestowed upon yourself?” Sylvain says, and laughs, and thrusts out a hand for Felix to fall back into this dance with him. The same dance they would float as children, a playful bat of words back and forth to dodge the topics looming above and below them.

“I didn’t come here to humor you,” Felix bites.

“Tell me, won’t you?” Sylvain prompts. “Please? I’m dying here, Felix. You were always a terrible poet.”

“If you want to pay to mock someone, hire a jester. Not a sellsword.”

Sylvain takes a half-step back. It’s not in defeat, or even a direct acknowledgement of the rise in Felix’s voice. He’s still smiling. He says, simply: “I’ve missed you.”

There is a stirring in Felix’s heart. He silences it, but lowers the arm he had risen in defense.

“I came here for a job,” Felix states.

“I know,” Sylvain says. His grin refuses to cease and it sends a syrupy, noxious drip into Felix’s stomach. “I can’t believe you were the one to take it. I never thought I’d see you again.”

Felix does not respond for a long moment. Too long, but Sylvain seems too preoccupied with lapping up the sight before him to mind. Felix shrugs away beneath his appraisal. He breaks eye contact with the Margrave. 

“Kye,” he says.

“Kye?” Sylvain echoes.

“My name.”

Sylvain blinks. Felix can almost hear the exact moment the name clicks in Sylvain’s scarce brain. “Kye? Like Kyphon?” Sylvain asks a question he already knows the answer to, because he follows it up with, “like Kyphon. It must be. You embarrassing little bookworm.”

“It’s not uncommon in the North,” Felix says.

“Kyphon,” Sylvain says again, feeling the name around in his mouth. “You named yourself Kyphon. The goddess really scraped the gruel barrel when she blessed you with this sense of creativity.”

Felix lets out an irritated snort through his nose. “Are you looking to get into a fight in your own damn courtyard, Margrave?”

“Honestly, Kye. It has been far too long since I’ve had your hands on me.”

The pass nearly unfoots Felix. Sylvain wears the slight aura of a man who knows what he’s done. Felix looks up at his oldest friend from a heavy brow, and scowls. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he says. 

“That’s not a compliment,” Sylvain replies, but he’s still smiling. 

“Still no wife, then?”

“No wife,” Sylvain says. “Why? Did you want to ask me something?”

Felix rolls his eyes and steps past the aging Margrave’s side. He aims his paces behind where the noble man stands, towards where his horse is settled in its temporary stable. He tips his head towards Sylvain on the path forward. “It was good to see you,” he says.

“You’re going?”

“No more bandit strongholds. My work’s done,” Felix states. 

“I haven’t even paid you, yet,” Sylvain says. When Felix doesn’t halt, he adds, “you dumb, slippery bastard. Stop walking.”

Felix’s feet fall still. His escape halts. He sighs, and looks back at Sylvain with an expression of genuine distaste.

“Dinner,” Sylvain says. “With me?”

“Do you make it a habit of inviting every mercenary you hire to the Gautier table?” Felix asks.

“This is a special occasion,” Sylvain replies. “Haven’t you heard? The legendary hero Kyphon is coming to dinner.”

-

“You’ve done good work in Sreng,” Felix tells him. Later, when they’re tucked away and alone and inhibitions are drowned out by the lulling presence of old friends. Felix’s voice is flat and Sylvain’s personal quarters are less gaudy than he is expecting. His arms are looped loose around Sylvain’s neck and he stares at the single, stitched tapestry on the wall.

“Sreng?” Sylvain sounds distracted as he works on unbuckling the latches of Felix’s armor. His forehead is pressed to the front of Felix’s shoulder, his eyes cast narrow and downwards as he focuses on removing Felix from his clothes. 

“Yes,” Felix continues. “Stories reach even the most reclusive of wandering swords, you know. It’s noble work.”

“I’m trying.” Sylvain takes a deep breath. “I’ve been trying.”

“It’s admirable.”

“Damn it, Felix. Can you help me out, here?”

Felix chuckles, and it sounds nearly hoarse. He can’t remember the last time he has laughed. He steps away from Sylvain and frees himself from his armor and tunic with practiced ease. He rolls a shoulder, overstrained in the day’s activity. Sylvain watches him. He stares, but his gaze is unfocused.

“A few more scars since you’ve last seen me, I’m sure, but let’s not make it a spectacle,” Felix notes.

“I’ve missed you,” Sylvain says, a wispy echo of the earlier proclamation.

“Well, you have me,” Felix says. “Or rather, you’re about to have me.”

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“You don’t have to.”

They stand in silence. Felix seizes the quiet to shove off his boots and trousers. He steps out of the mussed pile of his mercenary kit and crosses his arms. “Alright,” he says. “I’m naked. I imagine you know what to do next.” 

“Do you want to stay?” Sylvain asks.

“What?”

“Stay. In Gautier.”

“No,” Felix says.

“Oh,” Sylvain replies, deflated.

“I didn’t go to all this trouble to escape my family legacy just to settle down and play your loyal knight,” Felix says.

“You wouldn’t have to be my knight,” Sylvain affirms. “You wouldn’t have to be anything but Felix. Kyphon. Whoever you want.”

“Are you going to bed me or have I disassembled my armor for fun?”

It’s an invitation, and Sylvain takes him up on it without further comment.

Sylvain dips Felix to the bed with more practice than even a lifelong philanderer should reasonably have. He moves with muscle memory, his mind focused on other things while his hand rounds Felix’s thigh and drags it up over his own, still-clothed waist. Sylvain presses his lips to Felix’s neck and Felix squirms, dragging himself away. Sylvain freezes. 

“Fe?” he asks.

“The beard,” Felix says. His hand presses up to Sylvain’s mouth and he shoves the man’s face aside, away from his bared neck.

“I like the beard,” Sylvain says. “The beard’s great.”

Felix lowers his hand a few inches down Sylvain’s face, until he’s holding the sharp line of his jaw. He tilts it to the left, examining him. “So this is intentional, then.”

“It is,” Sylvain nods. “Don’t you think I look distinguished?” 

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“I’m afraid my days of boyish charm are long over, my old friend.”

Felix slides a calloused thumb over the groomed hair. He appraises what age has done to Sylvain, and finds himself not as adverse to the results as he wishes. “You’ve turned out fine,” he notes.

“Just fine?”

“You’ve put on weight.”

Sylvain laughs. “The loyal people in my life have the decency to say ‘portly,’ you know.”

Felix slides his arms around Sylvain’s neck. He tugs his face close, sudden, and nearly unbalancing him.

“I am neither loyal, nor decent,” he says.

“I’m aware.” Sylvain smiles when his lips hover near Felix’s, each breath ghosting across Felix’s skin. “I’m not looking for either from you.”

“Good.”

Sylvain leans in for a kiss but Felix halts his attempt—his fingers gripping into the back of Sylvain’s teal tunic and pulling it up and over the grand Margrave’s head. He drags it off and tosses it to the floor. Sylvain sits up when he’s done. His shoulders are as broad as they had been when they were younger but he has filled out, now. The sharp angles of wartime have vanished under the softness of a diplomat. Felix reaches out a hand to settle on his chest. 

It holds there. Senses a heartbeat.

“Are you going to offer me any sort of reaction or am I just supposed to let you fondle me while looking several shades of sour,” Sylvain jokes, and Felix—Felix grins. A breath heaves out of his chest and he feels lighter. Brighter, with Sylvain above him.

“There we go,” Sylvain tacks on. He leans down and this time Felix does not interrupt the kiss that is planted on him. Their lips move against one another with the foreignness that follows decades spent apart, but it’s still Sylvain. Felix shuts his eyes and lets himself be settled proper onto the bed. Sylvain’s hands slide down beneath his ass, and lift. Felix finds his naked hips pressed to the front of Sylvain’s trousers.

Felix knows this friction well but it’s different when Sylvain is above him. Sylvain has a certain, experienced deliberateness that is more formal than the rough grind of bodies Felix is used to in the wilds of Fodlan. Felix hikes a leg up higher but Sylvain does not falter. He keeps rhythm, slow and even, and Felix ruts up against the smooth gait with significantly more frenzy.

“No rush,” Sylvain murmurs.

“You made me sit through dinner,” Felix huffs in response.

“I thought you were hungry. You looked hungry,” Sylvain says.

“The face I make at a stack of meat is the same face I make when I want this.”

“This?”

“You.”

Sylvain reaches down and tugs at Felix’s dick. “Me?” he echoes, and Felix wants to shove him away but Sylvain’s thumb rubs down and around the head, tugging down his foreskin, and Felix’s thighs clutch around him in response. Felix’s head lulls back. He bares his teeth at Sylvain, his breath slow and deep and occasionally stuttered by a particularly satisfying pump of his hand.

“That’s right,” Sylvain says, soft. “Easy. Settle down, enjoy yourself.”

“Stop talking,” Felix orders.

“Still as tense as the first time I put my hand around you, hm? Do you ever get tired of being so on edge?”

“Shut your mouth and take your pants off.”

Felix doesn’t wait for Sylvain to follow directions. He reaches up and grips the waistband of Sylvain’s trousers himself. He shoves the expensive cloth down, exposing Sylvain’s cock to the cold, mountain air. It’s large and at attention. Felix pauses at the sight of it: familiar, and with enough memories tied to it that Felix cheeks darken at the sight. 

Sylvain steps out of his pants dutifully. He shifts Felix fully upon the bed and climbs on top of him. He kisses at Felix’s chin, then his neck, down his chest, and to the dip of his hips. Felix’s hands catch on Sylvain’s hair and he glances up. Sylvain is aroused, clearly, his eyes lidded and the bottom half of his face pressed to the hard, flat plane of Felix’s stomach. He holds the eye contact. His lips move, little mouthings that leave the barest trail of saliva over Felix’s skin. Felix tugs him up by the hair, just a bit, just enough to coax him to lift. Sylvain follows the movement without hesitance. Felix does it again. Left, right. Back down. Felix scowls at him.

“Like a horse,” Felix states.

“Unfailing,” Sylvain replies. “I’m going to suck your dick now.”

“Get on with it, then.”

Felix shoves his head down. Sylvain finds himself between Felix’s thighs, his hand regripped around the familiar dick before him. He licks his lips and Felix has to catch his hips from canting upwards at the sight. “Fuck,” he hisses, when Sylvain slips the head inside his mouth. It’s warm and wet and he shivers with the intense contact. The flat of Sylvain’s tongue drags upwards, over the slit, and Felix can sense where his teeth hover dutifully above the ridge before the full shaft. “Sylvain,” he groans. His hands curl into the roots of Sylvain’s hair again. They grip, tense, like a cat unfurling claws, and Sylvain happily takes him deeper.

The sensation is sickly sweet. Sylvain swallows around him, throat pulsing with discomfort, but he lets Felix hold him there. Hold him down. Felix, in turn, uses all his strength to keep his hips pinned to the bed. He doesn’t want to thrust, doesn’t want to take what he pleases from Sylvain’s mouth. He just wants to hold himself in the murky, pleasurable dark, and never move again. His willpower drags the moment out. Sylvain’s tongue rubs up and down him, his cheeks hollowing. Felix’s eyes shut tight.

Sylvain dips back, and slaps at Felix’s thigh. Felix lets up on his hair. Sylvain pulls away. He offers a small gasp when he pops off of Felix, the back of his hand wiping across where saliva pools out of his mouth. He coughs. Then he grimaces. Then, he coughs again.

Felix laughs. “Out of practice?”

“Women are easier,” Sylvain says. He reaches down to grip Felix again. It’s easier to run a hand across the full length now that it drips with Sylvain’s spit.

“Lazy,” Felix chides.

“Goad me all you like, it’ll only make me want to undo you further.”

Sylvain lowers himself again and suddenly there are deep, suctioning kisses being placed on the inside of Felix’s thigh. Sylvain’s tongue runs up the crease of Felix’s hip up to the base of his cock. Sylvain spends some time there, mouthing at the shaft. 

Felix presses his thigh against Sylvain’s cheek, pressuring him to get back to the main course. Sylvain, instead, heaves the thigh over his shoulder and lifts upwards. The other, he pins to the mattress.

Felix reacts like the wild, defensive thing he is to his legs being spread apart. He squirms, and Sylvain presses his chest down against Felix’s hips to keep him from wriggling his leg back down. Felix ruts up against Sylvain’s pecs, his chin tipped back. He tries to twist his thigh backwards and away but Sylvain’s grip is strong and—and his mouth is back on the soft inner skin, there. Where neither sun nor scar has ever reached. 

“Easy,” Sylvain says. It’s so low Felix swears he can hear the vibration of his chest echo in his dick. “Relax.”

“Make me,” Felix spits back, breathless.

When Sylvain’s mouth envelops him again it is with more perseverance, and more purpose. Sylvain does not drive himself so deep but he bobs his head with a rhythm that makes stars grace the edges of Felix’s vision. He all but convulses under Sylvain’s practiced ministrations. His legs tense and try to close around Sylvain in a vice. His left heel digs into Sylvain’s back. The other scrambles for purpose atop the sheets. Sylvain sucks, dragging his mouth upwards, and Felix moans. His ass lifts up. Sylvain presses it back down, releasing him from his mouth.

“Missed that,” Sylvain says. He sounds hoarse. “Your voice is nice, Fe. I missed it.”

Felix bucks his dick up against chronic nothingness. His face scrunches up. “Sylvain,” he groans out. 

“Like that... Just like that.”

“Touch me or I’ll murder you.”

“Mmm,” Sylvain hums, and gets back to work.

Sylvain’s mouth is unmatched. His technique feels unobtainable by any other, or at least it does in the moment his throat flutters around Felix’s cock. Felix shudders and bucks his hips into the wet heat and Sylvain takes it. Takes it, takes the whole thing. Doesn’t complain. Keeps his eyes shut and reaches a hand to touch himself, lazily, while Felix completely unravels beneath him. Takes him in, deeper, warmer, safer. Felix shivers and his thrusts fall off rhythm to Sylvain’s dips but the surprise sensation only brings him more pleasure. 

What shreds of composure he maintains devolve to desperation. His hands grip red, again. Red speckled with silver. Sylvain looks up at him under those eyes, lidded and wanting, and Felix bucks his hips once, twice. Doesn’t bother to give warning. He knows Sylvain knows because Sylvain takes him all the way down. Holds him there, in that impossible void. Felix comes. He moans. His vision whites out in a half-dozen flickers and the force sends a convulsion all the way to his toes. He’s dazed, rattled, and Sylvain is still there. Sylvain’s throat constricts around him. Sylvain swallows, lifts his head up, drops Felix’s softened dick from his mouth, and _smiles_.

Felix has no comeback, no retort. Felix has no complaints. Felix does not remember what a complaint feels like. Felix shivers. His hands are on Sylvain’s face, now. They drag Sylvain up and kiss him. It’s deep, satisfying. It’s salty where Felix tastes himself but it’s perfect. Sylvain’s hands are in his own hair, not as long as it was when they were brothers in arms but long enough to tug his head back and force the kiss deeper. Felix’s thoughts are unfocused yet narrow. He does not see or feel or hear or smell anything but the other body zero centimeters from his own.

Sylvain murmurs something and Felix nods at him, but doesn’t bother to parse the meaning or respond. Sylvain tucks a loose hair behind Felix’s ear and Felix gives a guttural, pleased noise. Sylvain laughs. 

“Is that a yes?” he says.

“...What?” Felix answers. His voice feels like it’s coming from two feet away.

“You’ll stay?”

Felix’s shoulders fall. Sylvain must sense the shift, because his hands come up to rub at them. Felix’s face settles into the crook of Sylvain’s shoulder and hands rub into the knots of his neck but Felix is not present, not fully. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t.”

Above him, Sylvain nods. “I missed you,” he states in turn. It’s become nothing short of a mantra. Felix wonders if he means something more, if Sylvain is feeling more and doesn’t know how to express it beyond the repetition of longing. Felix decides it’s none of his business.

“You can come on my face,” Felix offers, in apology.

Sylvain snorts. “What a consolation prize.”

“Jerk off onto the sheets, then. See what I care.”

“Fine, fine. Touch me, won’t you?”

Sylvain is straddled above him. Felix kisses him again, his hand fumbling down to find Sylvain’s cock. It’s hard, dangerously, after all this time. Felix attempts to pump it but Sylvain’s body does most of the work, rutting down into his fist instinctively.

“Felix,” Sylvain gasps. He’s leaned onto his forearm. His face hovers above Felix’s own. His eyes are open, bright.

“Sylvain,” Felix whispers.

Sylvain’s eyes shut. They clench tight. His face falls against the mattress beside Felix’s own, his breath hot and close to Felix’s ear. He shoves aside Felix’s hand and instead lifts Felix’s hips up to his own. He frots against him, hips canting forward and dick dragging across Felix’s lower abdomen. Felix arcs his back up and lets Sylvain grind. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says. His breath is short.

“Here,” Felix replies. His body is shoved up by a particularly strong thrust, Sylvain’s dick slipping along the crease where his hip meets his body. 

Sylvain’s rhythm stutters. He says, again, “Felix.” He kisses Felix’s neck, open-mouthed and hot and sloppy. “Felix.” Then, “mine.”

Felix stills but Sylvain does not notice, or care. Sylvain shudders and his movements tip off the tables of coherency. There is no practiced bedding or experienced blowjob. No philanderer’s charm. There is just Sylvain, grinding himself down against Felix with wild, intense abandon, like a dog seeking relief through any means in his direct vicinity. 

“Mine,” he says again, and shudders, and Felix feels a splatter of come coat his abs.

They hold there for a while, together. It’s quiet in the Margrave’s quarters. Nighttime has fallen from dusk outside and the only light comes from the little oil lamp on Sylvain’s writing desk.

Finally, Sylvain collapses atop Felix. 

“Oof,” Felix voices, Sylvain’s mess squashing between them. He tries to slide out from under the other man but Sylvain holds him firm. A sticky kiss is placed to Felix’s cheek.

“Missed—“

“Me. Yes, I’ve heard.”

“It’s true,” Sylvain whispers. 

“I know. I feel the same.”

“Not enough to stay?”

Felix puts his arms around Sylvain and gently lowers him to the side. There is a chill in the room that starts to sink back into him without the heat of the moment keeping him warm. He shivers, and tucks himself back close to Sylvain.

“I’ll visit,” he states. His voice still sounds distant.

“You won’t,” Sylvain replies. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

-

When they say goodbye in the morning it is with a handshake, followed by a quick hug and pat on the back. They do not kiss. They do not say that they have missed one another, do miss one another, or will miss one another. They smell clean, each decorated with the soap of Sylvain’s washchamber. Felix had taken his fill of the room and dressed himself before the sun had even risen.

“Goodbye,” Sylvain says, saddened.

“I will see you again,” Felix replies, and in many ways he hopes it is not a lie.

Felix departs with the small collection of mercenaries he’d arrived with. They’re from a guild that has been friendly to him despite his reluctance to join their ranks. He’s always been a lone wolf, but there is something alluring about knowing he has a home despite not having a proper title within it.

He looks to the eldest of the men, the one he knows best, and says: “if I die, you bring my sword here.”


End file.
